The American attack on Afghanistan has two publicly admitted agendas: the eradication of Osama bin Laden and his network and the toppling of the Taliban government.
It is the common consensus, not only in America, but also throughout the world community, that what happened on Sept. 11, was a barbaric and cruel act against humanity which has no place in the basic norms and teachings of Islam.
It is only justice that the people directly or indirectly responsible for this crime should be brought to justice and punished. If bin Laden and his organization are the responsible parties, they must be tracked down and eliminated.
But at the same time, a question comes to mind: Is killing Osama bin Laden going to solve the problem of terrorism? Is he the only priority in the fight against terrorism? Not necessarily.
To fight terrorism, we have to find the root causes of terrorism that arise from injustices throughout the world, oppression of local populations by autocratic governments, suppression of people by various undemocratic regimes and the unbalanced treatment of various underdeveloped and developing countries and groups by powerful countries in many areas.
The second question concerns the Taliban. The Taliban is an Afghanized plural of the Arabic word Talib, meaning student. In the war against the Soviet Union the Taliban didn?t exist.
Some of the Taliban?s leaders, including Mullah Muhammad Omar, participated in the Jihad against the Soviet Union as local commanders, but the majority of the members of the current Taliban, who were in their teens and twenties, were pursuing religious studies in various Madrassas in Pakistan. Some of these local commanders retreated to their hometowns after the so called Islamic State of Afghanistan was instated in April 1992.
The emergence of the Taliban is the result of factional fighting between various groups that were seeking power. The United States? pursuit of policy to topple the Taliban government without an acceptable alternative for the Afghan people will result in civil war and the further escalation of violence in the region. It will also result in the expansion of terrorism in the world.
The U.S. government is concentrating on two alternatives for the future government of Afghanistan.
The first one is reinstating the Northern Alliance to the seat of power in Kabul, which will spell disaster, civil war and the re-institution of ethnic war in Afghanistan.
The Northern Alliance is a combination of splinter groups ranging from Communists to religious extremists. The groups comprising the Northern Alliance are the same people who came to power in April 1992 and started the destruction of Kabul.
Under the Burhanuddin Rabanis presidency and the Ahmad Shah Massouds defense ministry, innocent people were killed. The city was shelled. Women, girls and young boys were raped. Opposition fighters were skinned alive.
Before discussing the Northern Alliance, however, it is important to understand what the Taliban is. I divide the Taliban into four groups: The Taliban Taliban, the Talib Taliban, the Common Taliban and the Communist Taliban.
The Taliban Taliban was educated in Madrassas across Pakistan. The majority of them have bachelors degrees. Some have master degrees in religious studies and some have a second degree either in history, economics or political science. Some members of this group are in the decision making ranks, but they are not as powerful as the other groups. Their views and acts are blocked by the extremist elements.
The second group, the Talib Taliban, is comprised of students who either finished high school or broke their education in the middle to join the ranks of Taliban. This group also includes small local commanders from the time of Jihad.
This dominant group of the Taliban ranks is involved in the daily decision-making process. They impose their views on the rest of the Taliban and the general population. Their strength comes from their capability to organize a fighting force.
The third group, the Common Taliban, are illiterate people of the countryside who joined the ranks of the Taliban to survive financially. This group does not have any particular political agenda. Traditionally, these people are very conservative, and they prefer a paternalistic society. Any kind of discussion with them about freedom, women’s rights and education will lead one nowhere. This group is the main fighting force of the Taliban groups.
The fourth group of the Taliban, the Communist Taliban, is mainly the ex Communists who switched sides after the collapse of the Communist government. Because of their past experience in government and administration, this group is involved in the administrative affairs at lower levels. Some members of this group have managed to reach some higher level of government administration.
Along with the extremist elements of the Taliban, this group is mainly held responsible for harassing and beating men and women in the name of imposing the Islamic code.
Now we must come back to the Northern Alliance. To understand exactly who these people are, it is important to look into the background and history of individual players. I will give a short introduction that hopefully will shed some light on the hypocritical faces and behaviors of these people.
If we go back to the time when the Communists were in power in Afghanistan and the country was occupied by the Soviet troops, Rashid Dostam, a self-proclaimed general, was the bloodiest and most torturous military commander of the Gilam Jam Militia.
When this group got to a place, its members did not only kill all the Mujahideen they could capture, but they also killed innocent women, children and elderly people. They destroyed the houses, crops and fields of the town people.
One could talk about Massoud?s connection with the Maoists when he was a student at the University of Kabul or his working for the Russian KGB. However, I will concentrate on the events and time when the Afghan people were fighting the Soviet invasion.
In the height of the Jihad, when the rest of the country was fighting the Russians, Massoud signed several peace treaties with the occupiers, the Soviet Union. During that period, Massoud never launched any attacks, which could have caused serious Soviet casualties.
Most of his attacks were designed and articulated to appease the show biz of the French, Britain and other foreign news agencies. Burhanuddin Rabanishis? real face can be seen in the four and-half years of his torturous reign over Kabul. Under his rule, thousands of innocent people were killed. They were burnt alive. Nails were inserted in peoples heads, and they committed so many more atrocities, all of which the world has forgotten.
Under the Hezb-i-Wahdat regime, human and women?s rights were abolished. The Afghan people were subject to the despotic rule of his government For more information, read the reports of Amnesty International.
One example of his style of government, which I would like to bring your attention, is a decree issued by the Islamic Government of Afghanistan in 1-5-1372 A.H. (March of 1993):
?Afghanistan is an Islamic country. For the implementation of the rule of God and an Islamic state and government, the people of Afghanistan have fought for 14 years?from beginning when the Islamic government of Afghanistan came to power until now, we still see with great sorrow and distress, that women in Afghanistan are still working in public offices, Radio and TV. We request the various government entities and agencies that women must be relieved from their jobs and they (women) must not be allowed to walk on the street or in the cities. Schools for women, which in reality are the centers of prostitution, must be closed and also women must be thrown out from radio and television.?
General Fahim, and many other Communist generals who comprise half of the Northern Alliance?s top leaders and forces, are responsible for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan. They leveled the country to its current status of rubble. When the Taliban captured Kabul in September of 1996, the factions fighting each other prior to this takeover formed an alliance to fight the Taliban.
This became known later as the Northern Alliance. After losing Kabul to the Taliban, these forces were pushed to northern Afghanistan. In 1997, a member of the Northern Alliance and a commander of Rashid Dostam, Abdul Malik, massacred more than 5,000 innocent ethnic Pashtoons in three days in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. This included some Taliban fighters. These are just a few examples of their record regarding human and women rights, peace and stability.
I bring them up so the reader can understand what the Northern Alliance is and what kind of government and ideas they will bring back if they come back to power.
The second alternative, which the United States is looking into, is bringing the 86-year old ex-monarch Mohammad Zahir back to power.
The majority of the Afghan people do not see him as a viable answer. However, some elites and bureaucrats who worked in various administrations when Zahir was king would like to see him come back to power.
The majority of these people did not participate in any way in the fight against the Soviet occupation. These are the ones who migrated to the West. These people do not have popular support in Afghanistan. People in Afghanistan tend to give power to those who were actively involved in Jihad against the Soviet Union in one way or another.
Zahir satisfied himself by a yearly condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He didn’t go beyond that. Zahir, because of his passive role in the Jihad period, lost the support he once had when he was king.
Tribal leaders and political parties that were desperately working for the return of Shah in the Jihad period are opposing his return to Afghanistan in the current situation. Popular support for Zahir has diminished as a result of his indifference to the cause of Afghanistan in the past 28 years.
What is left?
If the United States really wants to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, it must establish democratic institutions in Afghanistan and fight terrorism in Afghanistan. The United States has to look beyond the Northern Alliance and the ex-king.
There are Afghans around the world who are willing to work for the establishment of peace and stability in Afghanistan. There are elements in the Taliban ranks with which one could initiate a dialogue.
The president and the U.S. government need to investigate alternatives that will fill the power vacuum after the United States leaves Afghanistan.
The United States must investigate an acceptable form of government in which peace and stability are insured and the dignity of the Afghan people is preserved.